"I Can Write", a Rant

 When I graduated college with a Creative Writing degree, the first job I landed was working at a grocery store. There was a recession going on, and I hadn't been very good at accumulating useful experiences during my school days, so my resume was pretty much "I went to college! Yay?"

As I recall, the uniform options were (a) a white buttondown shirt or (b) a dreary blue sweatshirt with the store logo on it. The dreary blue sweatshirt was more comfortable and most people wore it, including myself. One night, I wore the white shirt, because I'd been invited to a gathering of writerly types that I was going to immediately after work.

One of my co-workers noticed, and asked me why I was wearing a white shirt.

"I'm gonna go hang out with a bunch of writers," I told her.

"You can write?" she asked.

"Most literate people can," I replied.

And that's the thing of it. Most literate people can. People do it every day, even if it's just to respond to something on Facebook or Twitter. Everybody writes.

There used to be a debate as to whether those who published their work themselves were "real" writers, as opposed to those who had run their books through the publishing industrial complex. With the rise of ebooks and print-on-demand publishing, the line between the two got blurrier and when people actually started making a living at it, the demarcation pretty much fell apart to leave behind nothing but a thin line, because nobody argues with money.

Somewhere along the line, the answer to the question of who a real writer was became this. "If you write, you are a writer."

And this is true. If you write, you are, by definition, a writer. You know what else this means?

It means you're not special.

There's a certain misbegotten glamour about being a writer that still enchants. All you have to say is "I'm a writer" and you instantly become more interesting to people, even if all you wrote for public consumption was a 20-page ebook about free writing that sold 18 copies. The notion that anybody can be a writer doesn't sit well with some, in part because they feel their hard work earns them the title of "writer." Having any old literate somebody, regardless of talent, claim the same seems to cheapen it, somehow.

But that's the thing. Writing is cheap. All you need is basic literacy skills and supplies (pen and paper) that you can get from the school supply aisle of your local grocery store. Or you can use the computer that you already own to access the internet with, and type things with any number of free word processing options.

"Ah," somebody might say, "perhaps anybody can write, but not everybody can write well!"

Yes, but what do you mean by "well", exactly?

Can you arrange words into coherent sentences? Congratulations, you finished grade school.

Can you arrange those sentences into coherent paragraphs? Congratulations, you graduated from high school with average grades.

Can you arrange those paragraphs into arguments? Hooray! You made it through college.

Can you arrange those arguments using precise and specialized vocabulary? Looks like you survived grad school.

Fluency in your native tongue is not a talent, not even with sophisticated grammar under your belt. What falls under talent is what you're trying to do with the writing and how effective you are at it.

Can you write descriptions that paint a clear picture in the mind? That's talent.

Can you create characters with a sense of depth that makes them resemble actual human beings? That's talent.

Can you craft a plot that engages readers to want to find out what happens next? That's talent.

However, announcing that you're a talented writer comes across as rather egocentric, and perhaps as someone who hasn't crossed the Dunning-Kruger Threshold. (Talent is perpetually a work-in-progress anyway; truly talented people are always pushing themselves to improve.) So you're back to "I'm a writer" along with millions of people who are also writers.

There's nothing wrong with being a writer. As a writer myself, I'm not going to denigrate it. What I am going to denigrate is the tendency to see writing as some rare and precious gift that only a blessed few possess. A functional knowledge of one's native language is not an impressive feat, and shouldn't be treated as one.

You want to write? Write. Just don't kid yourself that it puts you on a higher plane above mere mortals. Almost anybody can write. And almost everybody does.